Bicycle Road Safety Courses (Boston: schools, shop, bus)

[Londongirl2]

Hi
I'm relocating from London in the fall and want to get a bike once I'm in Boston. I've searched the internet for bike safety courses in the area but can't find anything - do anyone know of any schools or local government run programs that offer basic bicycle road safety courses? Thanks!

[beth98]

Landry's site has a resource center with lots of good information and links to MassBike classes. Landry's Bicycles: Resources - ABC Quick Check (http://www.landrys.com/resources/default.aspx - broken link)

Bikes not Bombs offers free clinics that may be helpful to you: Bikes not Bombs

[snatale1]

Originally Posted by Londongirl2

Hi
I'm relocating from London in the fall and want to get a bike once I'm in Boston. I've searched the internet for bike safety courses in the area but can't find anything - do anyone know of any schools or local government run programs that offer basic bicycle road safety courses? Thanks!

Not needed, same common sense as in London. Don't fly out from behind a parked car to become bus food. And don't be one of those people that sit at red light IN FRONT of a car like you have any ability to get out of the way when it turns green. (But you are supposed to follow the signals) and wear a helmet so the moron in the car that wasn't paying attention doesn't scramble your brain.

[gilwood]

Just as science experiment, I counted 8 helmetted and 7 non-helemetted bike riders one morning. It seems that wearing a helmet here is truly optional.

It seems that some bike riders seem to ride in fear on sidewalks whenever possible or very close to the curb, while other riders literally ride in the middle of a lane as though he/she were a car.

I've seen maybe 2-3 hand signals in one year of passing bicyclists every day. Don't even bother.

The most interesting thing I saw was this biker wearing a big frame backpack with a huge dog inside. The dog was looking over the guy's shoulder like this was common place for him.

Not related to bikers, but I also saw a guy rollerblading in the middle of the lane at rush hour with a dog running at his side. He was actually going fast enough to keep up with traffic. Seems like he's done this before.

Moral of the story: There are no rules here.

One more story to add: People here will bike at night wearing all black in the middle of the winter in the middle of a freaking blizzard!!! One day a guy got too close to a giant frozen pile of snow that was sticking into the road, he fell on his side right in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes and all 4 of my tires slid. My car turned 45 degrees and stopped just short of killing this guy. The guy got up barely noticing me and proceeded to pick up stuff that broke off this bike in the middle of the road. I watched him do this for about 2 full minutes and finally just drove around him.